Graffiti Artist Tags Giant NYC Billboard With Drone

A well-known New York City graffiti artist has made use of a modified drone to “tag” one of the city’s most prominent billboards, in what some called the first use of a drone for a major act of public vandalism.

Katsu, who last year began using a modified drone to paint large canvases, put a newer version of the device to work in the early hours of Wednesday morning last week, painting a red scrawl across a six-story-high billboard located at a busy intersection at Houston St and Lafayette St in Manhattan.

Modified drone

The graffiti artist used a DJI Phantom 2 drone (pictured) with a modified controller that allows the spray can to be triggered while it is in flight. The event was carried out quickly in order to avoid the notice of police, taking less than a minute, according to reports.

The incident is the latest to highlight the growing ubiquity of drones, which have become accessible to large numbers of people as prices have declined. While drones have been put forward for purposes ranging from delivery services to traffic control, there are concerns over other uses the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) could be put to by individuals, from spying to carrying out destructive acts.

Early development

Katsu’s drone is still relatively primitive, and it is difficult to keep the device steady opposite a taggable surface, but the artist said has another version in development that will have a video element to improve stability. Katsu said he plans ultimately to release spray-paint drones for sale to the public.

“Seventy percent of the concentration is in maintaining this equilibrium with the two dimensional surface while you are painting,” Katsu told Wired.

The artist gained a reputation for his prolific tags in the 1990s and for using modified fire-extinguishers to create large-scale images, including in the 2011 defacement of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

He recently debuted a series of canvases painted with a spray can attached to a drone.

“I have been experimenting with the idea of using drones to accomplish the same things that drones are beginning to be used for in broader society, but in this case for crime, vandalism, art,” Katsu told arts magazine Vice last year.

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